Animal

from 'The Task'

I would not enter upon my list of friends,
Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm.
An inadvertant step may crush the snail,
That crawls at evening in the public path,
But he has the humanity, forewarned,
Will tread aside, and let the reptile live.

William Cowper (1731-1800)

from 'Festus'

All animals are living hieroglyphs,
The dashing dog, and stealthy stepping cat,
Hawk, bull, and all that breathe mean something more
To the true eye than their shapes show; for all
Were made in love, and made to be beloved,
Thus must he think as to earth's lower life,
Who seeks to win the world to thought and love.

Philip J. Bailey (1816-1902)

from 'The Mouse's Petition'

The well-taught philosophic mind
To all compassion gives;
Casts round the world an equal eye,
And feels for all that lives.

Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743-1825)

To a Dog

If there is no God for thee,
Then there is no God for me.

Anna Hempstead Branch (1875-1937)

Let's Not Forget

Your "meat" comes from a creature who has met
A hideous and most untimely death
Nor is it seemly when upon your dish
Lie corpses of a murdered bird or fish.

One fleeting glimpse of any factory farm
Would make the vilest soul cry in alarm.
The chickens, cows and pigs - their lives obscene
Degraded to meat, milk and egg machines.

The cows, their fate sealed at the slaughter house,
Can hear their friends in front of them cry out.
If we pretend that of this they know not,
We grossly underestimate their lot.

The chickens, five crammed tightly to a cage
Oft peck their mates in frightened fits of rage.
The light which blinds these creatures night and day
Adds sin and cruelty to each egg they lay.

The male chicks not appealing to our taste,
Are tossed alive in bags to our great haste.
This writhing heap of bodies is no lie.
Eventually, they suffocate and die.

To better understand a dairy cow
Try picturing this horrid scene somehow:
You're pumped with drugs, you're pregnant and you hurt.
And then your child is robbed from you at birth.

She is no mere automaton, I say.
She mourns the loss of her child several days.
The farmers steal your milk from you and then
For profit's sake, they knock you up again.

The child, a girl will share her mother's fate
If he's a boy, he's off to the veal crate -
A squalid, filthy stall not two feet wide.
He ne'er sees light and cannot turn inside.

A pig's life is the cruellest life around.
The female lies immobile on the ground.
The males can sexually enter her at will.
Her infants suck her nipples through a grill.

Since they've no space, insanity prevails.
And normally, they'd bite each others tails.
For farmers, this would cause a profit drain.
So tails are yanked at birth with squeals of pain.

The more we hide from these injustices
The less we find we know what justice is.
We spare our cats and dogs from such "misuse",
So why allow the other cruel abuse?

These are no more automatons, I say.
They're feeling creatures tortured night and day.
By people who in numbness feel no more,
For use by us who in our haste, ignore!

Here is a cause that rests on naught but us
And though at first we kick and scream and fuss,
We find in time a wholeness that will last
Despite the horrors of our actions past.

Those of religion, here's a truth today.
In front of you. It will not go away.
This is your trial; if you should shut it out.
Then, say, what is religion all about?

Mohan Embar

A Creed

In fellowship of living things
In kindred claims of Man and Beast,
In common courtesy that brings
Help from the greatest to the least,
In love that all life shall receive,
Lord, I believe.

Ellen Glasgow (1874-1945)

Obligation

They cannot ask for kindness
Or for mercy plead,
Yet cruel is our blindness
Which does not see their need,
World-over, town or city,
God trusts us with this task:
To give our love and pity
To those who cannot ask.

Edgar A. Guest (1881-1959)

from 'Slug'

I'm sure I've been a toad, one time or another,
With bats, weasels, worms ... I rejoice in the kinship.
Even the caterpillar I can love, and the various vermin.

Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)

from 'A Nursery Rhyme Book'

Hurt no living thing:
Ladybird, nor butterfly,
Nor moth with dusty wing,
Nor cricket chirping cheerily,
Nor grasshopper so light of leap,
Nor dancing gnat, nor beetle fat,
Nor harmless worms that creep.

from 'To What Purpose this Waste?'

And other eyes than ours
Were made to look on flowers,
Eyes of small birds and insects small:
The deep sun-blushing rose
Round which the prickles close
Opens her bosom to them all.
The tiniest living thing
That soars on feathered wing,
Or crawls among the long grass out of sight
Has just as good a right
To its appointed portion of delight
As any King.

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

But, by all thy nature's weakness,
Hidden faults and follies known,
Be thou, in rebuking evil,
Conscious of thine own.

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)

Voice of the Voiceless

So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind
Is all the sad world needs.

I am the voice of the voiceless:
Through me, the dumb shall speak;
Till the deaf world’s ear be made to hear
The cry of the wordless weak.

From street, from cage and from kennel,
From jungle, and stall, the wail
Of my tortured kin proclaims the sin
Of the mighty against the frail

For love is the true religion,
And love is the law sublime;
And all is wrought, where love is not
Will die at the touch of time.

Oh shame on the mothers of mortals
Who have not stopped to teach
Of the sorrow that lies in dear, dumb eyes,
The sorrow that has no speech.

The same Power formed the sparrow
That fashioned man-the King;
The God of the whole gave a living soul
To furred and to feathered thing.

And I am my brother’s keeper,
And I will fight his fight;
And speak the word for beast and bird
Till the world shall set things right.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox